How Much Longer?

It has been busy at Derby Cathedral today. We learn that an open day has been very successful, with far more people than expected - many wanting to see the peregrines!

Still no sign yet of our first egg, though down in Exeter we learn that a pair began laying last week. Here, in Derby, mutual bowing on our nest platform is increasing as the days go by - three times in one hour on Wednesday afternoon. Once the male has left after head-bowing, she often waddles slowly over, seeming to inspect the scrape. She stands, turns round, and sometimes sits down in it. On Monday we began seeing her spending time picking up and then dropping small stones around the scrape during the inspection process.

We are so sorry we can’t yet bring you live internet pictures – our aerials for the wireless internet connection went in one Friday, and we hope our IT people will be able to configure everything next week. In the meantime you can watch video clips in the blog entries below.

There was a panic on Tuesday afternoon when the Wildlife Trust received a report of a peregrine trapped in a roof void off St James Street. Jumping to conclusions, I thought it was our juvenile bird, but was so embarrassed to have it pointed out that it was actually a sparrowhawk! It eventually flew off of its own accord.